DILEMMA AGAIN FACING HURLING FANS
include all the games, so they have decisions to make.
There’s another player, or players in all this.
The four provincial councils and the GAA’s Central Competitions Control Committee (CCCC), who make the fixtures.
The importance of the provincial football championships has already been watered down by the new All-Ireland round robin format,
Dilution
Giving up Sunday afternoon slots for provincial finals - albeit, it already happens with the Leinster hurling final to avoid a clash with the Munster hurling final - would be viewed as a further dilution of the provincials.
And by extension, the power of the provincial councils.
It’s difficult to make the argument that the Munster or Leinster football finals are more worthy of television coverage than any Munster hurling game.
You could make a case for the Connacht and Ulster finals, which generally are highly competitive affairs with meaningful silverware handed out at the end.
But, if you believe there’s an RTE bias towards football, here are the stats.
As well as six Munster hurling games, RTE also have three in Leinster, plus the two AllIreland hurling quarter-finals, semi-finals and final.
Their total number of live hurling games is 15, including the Joe McDonagh final. In football that figure is 15. Throw in the Tailteann Cup and it’s 18.
Hardly a huge discrepancy. It doesn’t feel like a conspiracy against hurling.
If anything, hurling is paying the price for the Munster Championship being as near to perfect a competition as you can get, and certainly the best - bar none - across the entire GAA.
There are just too many outstandingly competitive games.
That’s why there isn’t a word about the mere three Leinster hurling games RTE and screening.
The GAA consistently make the argument that if it wasn’t for GAAGO a broadcast black out would have been in place for the likes of Tipperary/Waterford from last weekend and Cork/ Limerick from this weekend.
The Waterford/Cork and Cork/ Clare Munster games were screened on GAAGO on Sunday afternoons where RTE chose alternative fixtures.
Alternatives
Those alternatives were Clare v Limerick, Mayo v Roscommon, Galway v Kilkenny and Limerick v Tipperary.
Without GAAGO, under the current broadcast deal those four Munster hurling games wouldn’t have been screened anywhere.
On the weekends of May 18/19 and May 25/26, RTE won’t screen any football with their four game schedule devoted entirely to hurling.
That means no football on terrestrial television for three weeks as hurling takes centre stage.
GAAGO, who are screening the crunch Galway/Derry first round All-Ireland tie, will step in again.
We’re unlikely to hear the same level of uproar about that.
Maybe we should, but we won’t.
Does it really stack up that RTE or the GAA are out to get hurling - or promote football at its expense.
Or does the Association, while undoubtedly to an extent helping to shape the economy and society it finds itself in, simply operate within that reality?
Maybe the GAA sniffed an opportunity with GAAGO, but until there are three or four free to air broadcasters vying for rights, to an extent, their hands are tied.